Built-In Synth

Synthesia is a living project. You can help by sharing your ideas.
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Gtarbmx
Posts: 1

Post by Gtarbmx »

how about a standalone synth that wold be integrated into the program. something that would completely kill the delay. it's something that would be great for people without fancy soudcards and it would be better than using the microsoft wavetable.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Somebody just mentioned something similar over here. You're right that the Microsoft Wavetable leaves a lot to be desired. And it's pretty clear that it simply wasn't made for real-time responses given the pretty huge amount of latency that's always there.

Like I mentioned over in the other topic, including a synth would be tricky for two reasons: the glaringly large one is licensing. Unless there is a decent totally free one out there (I haven't heard of one), there would be some contracts, negotiation, extra costs (for me and you guys), and a lot of extra trouble.

The smaller more technical issue is that even the smallest soft-synth would quadruple the download size (and the average size ones would make it 20x larger). That's not too bad on your end, but at some point bandwidth costs start to add up over here. I try my best to keep the package as small as possible for you and me. ;)

Still, I can at least bridge the gap a little bit. By including VSTi support, instead of having to install a host, a virtual MIDI driver, a set of instruments, configure them all (and Synthesia) together... it should just be the instruments, if I understand it correctly. Though, my understanding is pretty limited at this point. I don't have much (any?) VST experience yet.
Typhlosion
Posts: 82

Post by Typhlosion »

The problems I have with the VST hosts I tried is that they want to use ASIO4All. That means that they lock the soundcard for themselves so that no other program is able to output any sound which often results in weird behaviour or crashing of those programs (Adobe Flash hangs, Notation Composer crashes, Guitar Pro makes everything weird until a restart of Windows, VLC does not outpu sound until it gets restarted etc).
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Yeah, that is a pretty steep penalty for wanting super-low latency.

I wonder if sound-cards that have built-in ASIO (where ASIO4ALL isn't required) behave any better or not...
Raymond
Posts: 528

Post by Raymond »

My sound card has built-in ASIO and I don't have anyproblems with other sounds playing.
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cairnz
Posts: 182

Post by cairnz »

My Audigy2 doesn't have any problems either.
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